Management system and methods for object storage system

ABSTRACT

The storage system exports logical storage volumes that are provisioned as storage objects. These storage objects are accessed on demand by connected computer systems using standard protocols, such as SCSI and NFS, through logical endpoints for the protocol traffic that are configured in the storage system. To facilitate creation and management of logical storage volumes, special application programming interfaces (APIs) have been developed. The special APIs include commands to create a logical storage volume, bind, unbind, and rebind the logical storage volume, extend the size of the logical storage volume, clone the logical storage volume, and move the logical storage volume.

BACKGROUND

As computer systems scale to enterprise levels, particularly in thecontext of supporting large-scale data centers, the underlying datastorage systems frequently employ a storage area network (SAN) ornetwork attached storage (NAS). As is conventionally well appreciated,SAN or NAS provides a number of technical capabilities and operationalbenefits, fundamentally including virtualization of data storagedevices, redundancy of physical devices with transparent fault-tolerantfail-over and fail-safe controls, geographically distributed andreplicated storage, and centralized oversight and storage configurationmanagement decoupled from client-centric computer systems management.

Architecturally, the storage devices in a SAN storage system (e.g., diskarrays, etc.) are typically connected to network switches (e.g., FibreChannel switches, etc.) which are then connected to servers or “hosts”that require access to the data in the storage devices. The servers,switches and storage devices in a SAN typically communicate using theSmall Computer System Interface (SCSI) protocol which transfers dataacross the network at the level of disk data blocks. In contrast, a NASdevice is typically a device that internally contains one or morestorage drives and that is connected to the hosts (or intermediatingswitches) through a network protocol such as Ethernet. In addition tocontaining storage devices, the NAS device has also pre-formatted itsstorage devices in accordance with a network-based file system, such asNetwork File System (NFS) or Common Internet File System (CIFS). Assuch, as opposed to a SAN which exposes disks (referred to as LUNs andfurther detailed below) to the hosts, which then need to be formattedand then mounted according to a file system utilized by the hosts, theNAS device's network-based file system (which needs to be supported bythe operating system of the hosts) causes the NAS device to appear as afile server to the operating systems of hosts, which can then mount ormap the NAS device, for example, as a network drive accessible by theoperating system. It should be recognized that with the continuinginnovation and release of new products by storage system vendors, cleardistinctions between SAN and NAS storage systems continue to fade, withactual storage system implementations often exhibiting characteristicsof both, offering both file-level protocols (NAS) and block-levelprotocols (SAN) in the same system. For example, in an alternative NASarchitecture, a NAS “head” or “gateway” device is networked to the hostrather than a traditional NAS device. Such a NAS gateway device does notitself contain storage drives, but enables external storage devices tobe connected to the NAS gateway device (e.g., via a Fibre Channelinterface, etc.). Such a NAS gateway device, which is perceived by thehosts in a similar fashion as a traditional NAS device, provides acapability to significantly increase the capacity of a NAS based storagearchitecture (e.g., at storage capacity levels more traditionallysupported by SANs) while retaining the simplicity of file-level storageaccess.

SCSI and other block protocol-based storage devices, such as a storagesystem 30 shown in FIG. 1A, utilize a storage system manager 31, whichrepresents one or more programmed storage processors, to aggregate thestorage units or drives in the storage device and present them as one ormore LUNs (Logical Unit Numbers) 34 each with a uniquely identifiablenumber. LUNs 34 are accessed by one or more computer systems 10 througha physical host bus adapter (HBA) 11 over a network 20 (e.g., FiberChannel, etc.). Within computer system 10 and above HBA 11, storageaccess abstractions are characteristically implemented through a seriesof software layers, beginning with a low-level device driver layer 12and ending in an operating system specific file system layers 15. Devicedriver layer 12, which enables basic access to LUNs 34, is typicallyspecific to the communication protocol used by the storage system (e.g.,SCSI, etc.). A data access layer 13 may be implemented above devicedriver layer 12 to support multipath consolidation of LUNs 34 visiblethrough HBA 11 and other data access control and management functions. Alogical volume manager 14, typically implemented between data accesslayer 13 and conventional operating system file system layers 15,supports volume-oriented virtualization and management of LUNs 34 thatare accessible through HBA 11. Multiple LUNs 34 can be gathered andmanaged together as a volume under the control of logical volume manager14 for presentation to and use by file system layers 15 as a logicaldevice.

Storage system manager 31 implements a virtualization of physical,typically disk drive-based storage units, referred to in FIG. 1A asspindles 32, that reside in storage system 30. From a logicalperspective, each of these spindles 32 can be thought of as a sequentialarray of fixed sized extents 33. Storage system manager 31 abstractsaway complexities of targeting read and write operations to addresses ofthe actual spindles and extents of the disk drives by exposing toconnected computer systems, such as computer systems 10, a contiguouslogical storage space divided into a set of virtual SCSI devices, knownas LUNs 34. Each LUN represents some capacity that is assigned for useby computer system 10 by virtue of existence of such LUN, andpresentation of such LUN to computer systems 10. Storage system manager31 maintains metadata that includes a mapping for each such LUN to anordered list of extents, wherein each such extent can be identified as aspindle-extent pair <spindle #, extent #> and may therefore be locatedin any of the various spindles 32.

FIG. 1B is a block diagram of a conventional NAS or file-level basedstorage system 40 that is connected to one or more computer systems 10via network interface cards (NIC) 11′ over a network 21 (e.g.,Ethernet). Storage system 40 includes a storage system manager 41, whichrepresents one or more programmed storage processors. Storage systemmanager 41 implements a file system 45 on top of physical, typicallydisk drive-based storage units, referred to in FIG. 1B as spindles 42,that reside in storage system 40. From a logical perspective, each ofthese spindles can be thought of as a sequential array of fixed sizedextents 43. File system 45 abstracts away complexities of targeting readand write operations to addresses of the actual spindles and extents ofthe disk drives by exposing to connected computer systems, such ascomputer systems 10, a namespace comprising directories and files thatmay be organized into file system level volumes 44 (hereinafter referredto as “FS volumes”) that are accessed through their respective mountpoints.

Even with the advancements in storage systems described above, it hasbeen widely recognized that they are not sufficiently scalable to meetthe particular needs of virtualized computer systems. For example, acluster of server machines may service as many as 10,000 virtualmachines (VMs), each VM using a multiple number of “virtual disks” and amultiple number of “snapshots,” each which may be stored, for example,as a file on a particular LUN or FS volume. Even at a scaled downestimation of 2 virtual disks and 2 snapshots per VM, this amounts to60,000 distinct disks for the storage system to support if VMs weredirectly connected to physical disks (i.e., 1 virtual disk or snapshotper physical disk). In addition, storage device and topology managementat this scale are known to be difficult. As a result, the concept ofdatastores in which VMs are multiplexed onto a smaller set of physicalstorage entities (e.g., LUN-based VMFS clustered file systems or FSvolumes), such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,849,098, entitled“Providing Multiple Concurrent Access to a File System,” incorporated byreference herein, was developed.

In conventional storage systems employing LUNs or FS volumes, workloadsfrom multiple VMs are typically serviced by a single LUN or a single FSvolume. As a result, resource demands from one VM workload will affectthe service levels provided to another VM workload on the same LUN or FSvolume. Efficiency measures for storage such as latency and input/outputoperations (IO) per second, or IOPS, thus vary depending on the numberof workloads in a given LUN or FS volume and cannot be guaranteed.Consequently, storage policies for storage systems employing LUNs or FSvolumes cannot be executed on a per-VM basis and service level agreement(SLA) guarantees cannot be given on a per-VM basis. In addition, dataservices provided by storage system vendors, such as snapshot,replication, encryption, and deduplication, are provided at agranularity of the LUNs or FS volumes, not at the granularity of a VM'svirtual disk. As a result, snapshots can be created for the entire LUNor the entire FS volume using the data services provided by storagesystem vendors, but a snapshot for a single virtual disk of a VM cannotbe created separately from the LUN or the file system in which thevirtual disk is stored.

SUMMARY

One or more embodiments are directed to a storage system that isconfigured to isolate workloads running therein so that SLA guaranteescan be provided per workload, and data services of the storage systemcan be provided per workload, without requiring a radical redesign ofthe storage system. In a storage system that stores virtual disks formultiple virtual machines, SLA guarantees can be provided on a pervirtual disk basis and data services of the storage system can beprovided on a per virtual disk basis.

According to embodiments of the invention, the storage system exportslogical storage volumes, referred to herein as “virtual volumes,” thatare provisioned as storage objects on a per-workload basis, out of alogical storage capacity assignment, referred to herein as “storagecontainers.” For a VM, a virtual volume may be created for each of thevirtual disks and snapshots of the VM. In one embodiment, the virtualvolumes are accessed on demand by connected computer systems usingstandard protocols, such as SCSI and NFS, through logical endpoints forthe protocol traffic, known as “protocol endpoints,” that are configuredin the storage system.

A method for provisioning a logical storage volume for an applicationrunning in a computer system that is connected to a storage system viainput-output command (IO) paths and non-IO paths, according to anembodiment of the present invention, includes the steps of selecting alogical storage container created in the storage system, issuing arequest to the storage system via a non-IO path to create the logicalstorage volume in the selected logical storage container, and storing aunique identifier for the logical storage volume received from thestorage system in response to the request and associating the uniqueidentifier with the application running in the computer system.

A method for reprovisioning a logical storage volume for an applicationrunning in a computer system that is connected to a storage system viaIO paths and non-IO paths, according to an embodiment of the presentinvention, includes the steps of issuing a request to the storage systemvia a non-IO path to increase a size of the logical storage volumeprovisioned in the selected logical storage container, receivingacknowledgement of the increase in size from the storage system, andupdating a metadata file associated with the logical storage volume toindicate the increased size.

In accordance with another embodiment of the invention, a computersystem connected to a storage system via IO paths and non-IO paths,includes a management interface in a non-IO path, and a storageinterface in an IO path. The management interface is configured to: (i)generate a request to create a logical storage volume in the storagesystem and to receive in response to the request a unique identifier forthe logical storage volume, and (ii) generate a request to bind thelogical storage volume to a protocol endpoint configured in the storagesystem and to receive in response to the request first and secondidentifiers, and the storage interface encodes IO issued to the logicalstorage volume with the first and second identifiers.

Embodiments of the present invention further include a non-transitorycomputer-readable storage medium storing instructions that when executedby a computer system cause the computer system to perform one of themethods set forth above.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1A is a block diagram of a conventional block protocol-basedstorage device that is connected to one or more computer systems over anetwork.

FIG. 1B is a block diagram of a conventional NAS device that isconnected to one or more computer systems over a network.

FIG. 2A is a block diagram of a block protocol-based storage systemcluster that implements virtual volumes according to an embodiment ofthe invention.

FIG. 2B is a block diagram of a NAS based storage system cluster thatimplements virtual volumes according to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of components of the storage system cluster ofFIG. 2A or 2B for managing virtual volumes according to an embodiment ofthe invention.

FIG. 4 is a flow diagram of method steps for creating a storagecontainer.

FIG. 5A is a block diagram of an embodiment of a computer systemconfigured to implement virtual volumes hosted on a SAN-based storagesystem.

FIG. 5B is a block diagram of the computer system of FIG. 5A configuredfor virtual volumes hosted on a NAS-based storage system.

FIG. 5C is a block diagram of another embodiment of a computer systemconfigured to implement virtual volumes hosted on a SAN-based storagesystem.

FIG. 5D is a block diagram of the computer system of FIG. 5C configuredfor virtual volumes hosted on a NAS-based storage system.

FIG. 6 is a simplified block diagram of a computer environment thatillustrates components and communication paths used to manage virtualvolumes according to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 7 is a flow diagram of method steps for authenticating a computersystem to the storage system cluster of FIG. 2A or 2B.

FIG. 8 is a flow diagram of method steps for creating a virtual volume,according to one embodiment.

FIG. 9A is a flow diagram of method steps for discovering protocolendpoints that are available to a computer system.

FIG. 9B is a flow diagram of method steps for the storage system todiscover protocol endpoints to which a computer system is connected viaan in-band path.

FIG. 10 is a flow diagram of method steps for issuing and executing avirtual volume bind request, according to one embodiment.

FIGS. 11A and 11B are flow diagrams of method steps for issuing an IO toa virtual volume, according to one embodiment.

FIG. 12 is a flow diagram of method steps for performing an IO at astorage system, according to one embodiment.

FIG. 13 is a flow diagram of method steps for issuing and executing avirtual volume rebind request, according to one embodiment.

FIG. 14 is a conceptual diagram of a lifecycle of a virtual volume.

FIG. 15 is a flow diagram of method steps for provisioning a VM,according to an embodiment using the storage system of FIG. 2A.

FIG. 16A is a flow diagram of method steps for powering ON a VM.

FIG. 16B is a flow diagram of method steps for powering OFF a VM.

FIG. 17 is a flow diagram of method steps for extending the size of avvol of a VM.

FIG. 18 is a flow diagram of method steps for moving a vvol of VMbetween storage containers.

FIG. 19 is a flow diagram of method steps for cloning a VM from atemplate VM.

FIG. 20 is a flow diagram of method steps for provisioning a VM,according to another embodiment.

FIG. 21 illustrates sample storage capability profiles and a method forcreating a storage container that includes a profile selection step.

FIG. 22 is a flow diagram that illustrates method steps for creating avvol and defining a storage capability profile for the vvol.

FIG. 23 is a flow diagram that illustrates method steps for creatingsnapshots.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

FIGS. 2A and 2B are block diagrams of a storage system cluster thatimplements “virtual volumes” according to embodiments of the invention.The storage system cluster includes one or more storage systems, e.g.,storage systems 130 ₁ and 130 ₂, which may be disk arrays, each having aplurality of data storage units (DSUs), one of which is labeled as 141in the figures, and storage system managers 131 and 132 that controlvarious operations of storage systems 130 to enable embodiments of theinvention described herein. In one embodiment, two or more storagesystems 130 may implement a distributed storage system manager 135 thatcontrols the operations of the storage system cluster as if they were asingle logical storage system. The operational domain of distributedstorage system manager 135 may span storage systems installed in thesame data center or across multiple data centers. For example, in onesuch embodiment, distributed storage system manager 135 may comprisestorage system manager 131, which serves as a “master” manager whencommunicating with storage system manager 132, which serves as a “slave”manager, although it should be recognized that a variety of alternativemethods to implement a distributed storage system manager may beimplemented. DSUs represent physical storage units, e.g., disk or flashbased storage units such as rotating disks or solid state disks.According to embodiments, the storage system cluster creates and exposes“virtual volumes” (vvols), as further detailed herein, to connectedcomputer systems, such as computer systems 100 ₁ and 100 ₂. Applications(e.g., VMs accessing their virtual disks, etc.) running in computersystems 100 access the vvols on demand using standard protocols, such asSCSI in the embodiment of FIG. 2A and NFS in the embodiment of FIG. 2B,through logical endpoints for the SCSI or NFS protocol traffic, known as“protocol endpoints” (PEs), that are configured in storage systems 130.The communication path for application-related data operations fromcomputer systems 100 to the storage systems 130 is referred to herein asan “in-band” path. Communication paths between host bus adapters (HBAs)of computer systems 100 and PEs configured in storage systems 130 andbetween network interface cards (NICs) of computer systems 100 and PEsconfigured in storage systems 130 are examples of in-band paths.Communication paths from computer systems 100 to storage systems 130that are not in-band, and that are typically used to carry outmanagement operations, are referred to herein as an “out-of-band” path.Examples of out-of-band paths, such as an Ethernet network connectionbetween computer systems 100 and storage systems 130, are illustrated inFIG. 6 separately from the in-band paths. For simplicity, computersystems 100 are shown to be directly connected to storage systems 130.However, it should be understood that they may be connected to storagesystems 130 through multiple paths and one or more of switches.

Distributed storage system manager 135 or a single storage systemmanager 131 or 132 may create vvols (e.g., upon request of a computersystem 100, etc.) from logical “storage containers,” which represent alogical aggregation of physical DSUs. In general, a storage containermay span more than one storage system and many storage containers may becreated by a single storage system manager or a distributed storagesystem manager. Similarly, a single storage system may contain manystorage containers. In FIGS. 2A and 2B, storage container 142 _(A)created by distributed storage system manager 135 is shown as spanningstorage system 130 ₁ and storage system 130 ₂, whereas storage container142 _(B) and storage container 142 _(C) are shown as being containedwithin a single storage system (i.e., storage system 130 ₁ and storagesystem 130 ₂, respectively). It should be recognized that, because astorage container can span more than one storage system, a storagesystem administrator can provision to its customers a storage capacitythat exceeds the storage capacity of any one storage system. It shouldbe further recognized that, because multiple storage containers can becreated within a single storage system, the storage system administratorcan provision storage to multiple customers using a single storagesystem.

In the embodiment of FIG. 2A, each vvol is provisioned from a blockbased storage system. In the embodiment of FIG. 2B, a NAS based storagesystem implements a file system 145 on top of DSUs 141 and each vvol isexposed to computer systems 100 as a file object within this filesystem. In addition, as will be described in further detail below,applications running on computer systems 100 access vvols for IO throughPEs. For example, as illustrated in dashed lines in FIGS. 2A and 2B,vvol 151 and vvol 152 are accessible via PE 161; vvol 153 and vvol 155are accessible via PE 162; vvol 154 is accessible via PE 163 and PE 164;and vvol 156 is accessible via PE 165. It should be recognized thatvvols from multiple storage containers, such as vvol 153 in storagecontainer 142 _(A) and vvol 155 in storage container 142, may beaccessible via a single PE, such as PE 162, at any given time. It shouldfurther be recognized that PEs, such as PE 166, may exist in the absenceof any vvols that are accessible via them.

In the embodiment of FIG. 2A, storage systems 130 implement PEs as aspecial type of LUN using known methods for setting up LUNs. As withLUNs, a storage system 130 provides each PE a unique identifier known asa WWN (World Wide Name). In one embodiment, when creating the PEs,storage system 130 does not specify a size for the special LUN becausethe PEs described herein are not actual data containers. In one suchembodiment, storage system 130 may assign a zero value or a very smallvalue as the size of a PE-related LUN such that administrators canquickly identify PEs when requesting that a storage system provide alist of LUNs (e.g., traditional data LUNs and PE-related LUNs), asfurther discussed below. Similarly, storage system 130 may assign a LUNnumber greater than 255 as the identifying number for the LUN to the PEsto indicate, in a human-friendly way, that they are not data LUNs. Asanother way to distinguish between the PEs and LUNs, a PE bit may beadded to the Extended Inquiry Data VPD page (page 86h). The PE bit isset to 1 when a LUN is a PE, and to 0 when it is a regular data LUN.Computer systems 100 may discover the PEs via the in-band path byissuing a SCSI command REPORT_LUNS and determine whether they are PEsaccording to embodiments described herein or conventional data LUNs byexamining the indicated PE bit. Computer systems 100 may optionallyinspect the LUN size and LUN number properties to further confirmwhether the LUN is a PE or a conventional LUN. It should be recognizedthat any one of the techniques described above may be used todistinguish a PE-related LUN from a regular data LUN. In one embodiment,the PE bit technique is the only technique that is used to distinguish aPE-related LUN from a regular data LUN.

In the embodiment of FIG. 2B, the PEs are created in storage systems 130using known methods for setting up mount points to FS volumes. Each PEthat is created in the embodiment of FIG. 2B is identified uniquely byan IP address and file system path, also conventionally referredtogether as a “mount point.” However, unlike conventional mount points,the PEs are not associated with FS volumes. In addition, unlike the PEsof FIG. 2A, the PEs of FIG. 2B are not discoverable by computer systems100 via the in-band path unless virtual volumes are bound to a given PE.Therefore, the PEs of FIG. 2B are reported by the storage system via theout-of-band path.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of components of the storage system cluster ofFIG. 2A or 2B for managing virtual volumes according to an embodiment.The components include software modules of storage system managers 131and 132 executing in storage systems 130 in one embodiment or softwaremodules of distributed storage system manager 135 in another embodiment,namely an input/output (I/O) manager 304, a volume manager 306, acontainer manager 308, and a data access layer 310. In the descriptionsof the embodiments herein, it should be understood that any actionstaken by distributed storage system manager 135 may be taken by storagesystem manager 131 or storage system manager 132 depending on theembodiment.

In the example of FIG. 3, distributed storage system manager 135 hascreated three storage containers SC1, SC2, and SC3 from DSUs 141, eachof which is shown to have spindle extents labeled P1 through Pn. Ingeneral, each storage container has a fixed physical size, and isassociated with specific extents of DSUs. In the example shown in FIG.3, distributed storage system manager 135 has access to a containerdatabase 316 that stores for each storage container, its container ID,physical layout information and some metadata. Container database 316 ismanaged and updated by a container manager 308, which in one embodimentis a component of distributed storage system manager 135. The containerID is a universally unique identifier that is given to the storagecontainer when the storage container is created. Physical layoutinformation consists of the spindle extents of DSUs 141 that areassociated with the given storage container and stored as an orderedlist of <system ID, DSU ID, extent number>. The metadata section maycontain some common and some storage system vendor specific metadata.For example, the metadata section may contain the IDs of computersystems or applications or users that are permitted to access thestorage container. As another example, the metadata section contains anallocation bitmap to denote which <system ID, DSU ID, extent number>extents of the storage container are already allocated to existing vvolsand which ones are free. In one embodiment, a storage systemadministrator may create separate storage containers for differentbusiness units so that vvols of different business units are notprovisioned from the same storage container. Other policies forsegregating vvols may be applied. For example, a storage systemadministrator may adopt a policy that vvols of different customers of acloud service are to be provisioned from different storage containers.Also, vvols may be grouped and provisioned from storage containersaccording to their required service levels. In addition, a storagesystem administrator may create, delete, and otherwise manage storagecontainers, such as defining the number of storage containers that canbe created and setting the maximum physical size that can be set perstorage container.

Also, in the example of FIG. 3, distributed storage system manager 135has provisioned (on behalf of requesting computer systems 100) multiplevvols, each from a different storage container. In general, vvols mayhave a fixed physical size or may be thinly provisioned, and each vvolhas a vvol ID, which is a universally unique identifier that is given tothe vvol when the vvol is created. For each vvol, a vvol database 314stores for each vvol, its vvol ID, the container ID of the storagecontainer in which the vvol is created, and an ordered list of <offset,length> values within that storage container that comprise the addressspace of the vvol. Vvol database 314 is managed and updated by volumemanager 306, which in one embodiment, is a component of distributedstorage system manager 135. In one embodiment, vvol database 314 alsostores a small amount of metadata about the vvol. This metadata isstored in vvol database 314 as a set of key-value pairs, and may beupdated and queried by computer systems 100 via the out-of-band path atany time during the vvol's existence. Stored key-value pairs fall intothree categories. The first category is: well-known keys—the definitionof certain keys (and hence the interpretation of their values) arepublicly available. One example is a key that corresponds to the virtualvolume type (e.g., in virtual machine embodiments, whether the vvolcontains a VM's metadata or a VM's data). Another example is the App ID,which is the ID of the application that stored data in the vvol. Thesecond category is: computer system specific keys—the computer system orits management module stores certain keys and values as the virtualvolume's metadata. The third category is: storage system vendor specifickeys—these allow the storage system vendor to store certain keysassociated with the virtual volume's metadata. One reason for a storagesystem vendor to use this key-value store for its metadata is that allof these keys are readily available to storage system vendor plug-insand other extensions via the out-of-band channel for vvols. The storeoperations for key-value pairs are part of virtual volume creation andother processes, and thus the store operation should be reasonably fast.Storage systems are also configured to enable searches of virtualvolumes based on exact matches to values provided on specific keys.

IO manager 304 is a software module (also, in certain embodiments, acomponent of distributed storage system manager 135) that maintains aconnection database 312 that stores currently valid IO connection pathsbetween PEs and vvols. In the example shown in FIG. 3, seven currentlyvalid IO sessions are shown. Each valid session has an associated PE ID,secondary level identifier (SLLID), vvol ID, and reference count(RefCnt) indicating the number of different applications that areperforming IO through this IO session. The process of establishing avalid IO session between a PE and a vvol by distributed storage systemmanager 135 (e.g., on request by a computer system 100) is referred toherein as a “bind” process. For each bind, distributed storage systemmanager 135 (e.g., via IO manager 304) adds an entry to connectiondatabase 312. The process of subsequently tearing down the IO session bydistributed storage system manager 135 is referred to herein as an“unbind” process. For each unbind, distributed storage system manager135 (e.g., via IO manager 304) decrements the reference count of the IOsession by one. When the reference count of an IO session is at zero,distributed storage system manager 135 (e.g., via IO manager 304) maydelete the entry for that IO connection path from connection database312. As previously discussed, in one embodiment, computer systems 100generate and transmit bind and unbind requests via the out-of-band pathto distributed storage system manager 135. Alternatively, computersystems 100 may generate and transmit unbind requests via an in-bandpath by overloading existing error paths. In one embodiment, thegeneration number is changed to a monotonically increasing number or arandomly generated number, when the reference count changes from 0 to 1or vice versa. In another embodiment, the generation number is arandomly generated number and the RefCnt column is eliminated fromconnection database 312, and for each bind, even when the bind requestis to a vvol that is already bound, distributed storage system manager135 (e.g., via IO manager 304) adds an entry to connection database 312.

In the storage system cluster of FIG. 2A, IO manager 304 processes IOrequests (IOs) from computer systems 100 received through the PEs usingconnection database 312. When an IO is received at one of the PEs, IOmanager 304 parses the IO to identify the PE ID and the SLLID containedin the IO in order to determine a vvol for which the IO was intended. Byaccessing connection database 314, IO manager 304 is then able toretrieve the vvol ID associated with the parsed PE ID and SLLID. In FIG.3 and subsequent figures, PE ID is shown as PE_A, PE_B, etc. forsimplicity. In one embodiment, the actual PE IDs are the WWNs of thePEs. In addition, SLLID is shown as S0001, S0002, etc. The actual SLLIDsare generated by distributed storage system manager 135 as any uniquenumber among SLLIDs associated with a given PE ID in connection database312. The mapping between the logical address space of the virtual volumehaving the vvol ID and the physical locations of DSUs 141 is carried outby volume manager 306 using vvol database 314 and by container manager308 using container database 316. Once the physical locations of DSUs141 have been obtained, data access layer 310 (in one embodiment, also acomponent of distributed storage system manager 135) performs IO onthese physical locations.

In the storage system cluster of FIG. 2B, IOs are received through thePEs and each such IO includes an NFS handle (or similar file systemhandle) to which the IO has been issued. In one embodiment, connectiondatabase 312 for such a system contains the IP address of the NFSinterface of the storage system as the PE ID and the file system path asthe SLLID. The SLLIDs are generated based on the location of the vvol inthe file system 145. The mapping between the logical address space ofthe vvol and the physical locations of DSUs 141 is carried out by volumemanager 306 using vvol database 314 and by container manager 308 usingcontainer database 316. Once the physical locations of DSUs 141 havebeen obtained, data access layer performs IO on these physicallocations. It should be recognized that for a storage system of FIG. 2B,container database 312 may contain an ordered list of file:<offset,length> entries in the Container Locations entry for a given vvol (i.e.,a vvol can be comprised of multiple file segments that are stored in thefile system 145).

In one embodiment, connection database 312 is maintained in volatilememory while vvol database 314 and container database 316 are maintainedin persistent storage, such as DSUs 141. In other embodiments, all ofthe databases 312, 314, 316 may be maintained in persistent storage.

FIG. 4 is a flow diagram of method steps 410 for creating a storagecontainer. In one embodiment, these steps are carried out by storagesystem manager 131, storage system manager 132 or distributed storagesystem manager 135 under control of a storage administrator. As notedabove, a storage container represents a logical aggregation of physicalDSUs and may span physical DSUs from more than one storage system. Atstep 411, the storage administrator (via distributed storage systemmanager 135, etc.) sets a physical capacity of a storage container.Within a cloud or data center, this physical capacity may, for example,represent the amount of physical storage that is leased by a customer.The flexibility provided by storage containers disclosed herein is thatstorage containers of different customers can be provisioned by astorage administrator from the same storage system and a storagecontainer for a single customer can be provisioned from multiple storagesystems, e.g., in cases where the physical capacity of any one storagedevice is not sufficient to meet the size requested by the customer, orin cases such as replication where the physical storage footprint of avvol will naturally span multiple storage systems. At step 412, thestorage administrator sets permission levels for accessing the storagecontainer. In a multi-tenant data center, for example, a customer mayonly access the storage container that has been leased to him or her. Atstep 413, distributed storage system manager 135 generates a uniqueidentifier for the storage container. Then, at step 414, distributedstorage system manager 135 (e.g., via container manager 308 in oneembodiment) allocates free spindle extents of DSUs 141 to the storagecontainer in sufficient quantities to meet the physical capacity set atstep 411. As noted above, in cases where the free space of any onestorage system is not sufficient to meet the physical capacity,distributed storage system manager 135 may allocate spindle extents ofDSUs 141 from multiple storage systems. After the partitions have beenallocated, distributed storage system manager 135 (e.g., via containermanager 308) updates container database 316 with the unique containerID, an ordered list of <system number, DSU ID, extent number>, andcontext IDs of computer systems that are permitted to access the storagecontainer.

According to embodiments described herein, storage capability profiles,e.g., SLAs or quality of service (QoS), may be configured by distributedstorage system manager 135 (e.g., on behalf of requesting computersystems 100) on a per vvol basis. Therefore, it is possible for vvolswith different storage capability profiles to be part of the samestorage container. In one embodiment, a system administrator defines adefault storage capability profile (or a number of possible storagecapability profiles) for newly created vvols at the time of creation ofthe storage container and stored in the metadata section of containerdatabase 316. If a storage capability profile is not explicitlyspecified for a new vvol being created inside a storage container, thenew vvol will inherit the default storage capability profile associatedwith the storage container.

FIG. 5A is a block diagram of an embodiment of a computer systemconfigured to implement virtual volumes hosted on a storage systemcluster of FIG. 2A. Computer system 101 may be constructed on aconventional, typically server-class, hardware platform 500 thatincludes one or more central processing units (CPU) 501, memory 502, oneor more network interface cards (NIC) 503, and one or more host busadapters (HBA) 504. HBA 504 enables computer system 101 to issue IOs tovirtual volumes through PEs configured in storage devices 130. Asfurther shown in FIG. 5A, operating system 508 is installed on top ofhardware platform 500 and a number of applications 512 ₁-512 _(N) areexecuted on top of operating system 508. Examples of operating system508 include any of the well-known commodity operating systems, such asMicrosoft Windows, Linux, and the like.

According to embodiments described herein, each application 512 has oneor more vvols associated therewith and issues IOs to block deviceinstances of the vvols created by operating system 508 pursuant to“CREATE DEVICE” calls by application 512 into operating system 508. Theassociation between block device names and vvol IDs are maintained inblock device database 533. IOs from applications 512 ₂-512 _(N) arereceived by a file system driver 510, which converts them to block IOs,and provides the block IOs to a virtual volume device driver 532. IOsfrom application 512 ₁, on the other hand, are shown to bypass filesystem driver 510 and provided directly to virtual volume device driver532, signifying that application 512 ₁ accesses its block devicedirectly as a raw storage device, e.g., as a database disk, a log disk,a backup archive, and a content repository, in the manner described inU.S. Pat. No. 7,155,558 entitled “Providing Access to a Raw Data StorageUnit in a Computer System,” the entire contents of which areincorporated by reference herein. When virtual volume device driver 532receives a block IO, it accesses block device database 533 to referencea mapping between the block device name specified in the IO and the PEID (WWN of PE LUN) and SLLID that define the IO connection path to thevvol associated with the block device name. In the example shown herein,the block device name, archive, corresponds to a block device instanceof vvol12 that was created for application 512 ₁, and the block devicenames, foo, dbase, and log, correspond to block device instances ofvvol1, vvol16, and vvol17, respectively, that were created for one ormore of applications 512 ₂-512 _(N). Other information that is stored inblock device database 533 includes an active bit value for each blockdevice that indicates whether or not the block device is active, and aCIF (commands-in-flight) value. An active bit of “1” signifies that IOscan be issued to the block device. An active bit of “0” signifies thatthe block device is inactive and IOs cannot be issued to the blockdevice. The CIF value provides an indication of how many IOs are inflight, i.e., issued but not completed. In the example shown herein, theblock device, foo, is active, and has some commands-in-flight. The blockdevice, archive, is inactive, and will not accept newer commands.However, it is waiting for 2 commands-in-flight to complete. The blockdevice, dbase, is inactive with no outstanding commands. Finally, theblock device, log, is active, but the application currently has nopending IOs to the device. Virtual volume device driver 532 may chooseto remove such devices from its database 533 at any time.

In addition to performing the mapping described above, virtual volumedevice driver 532 issues raw block-level IOs to data access layer 540.Data access layer 540 includes device access layer 534, which appliescommand queuing and scheduling policies to the raw block-level IOs, anddevice driver 536 for HBA 504 which formats the raw block-level IOs in aprotocol-compliant format and sends them to HBA 504 for forwarding tothe PEs via an in-band path. In the embodiment where SCSI protocol isused, the vvol information is encoded in the SCSI LUN data field, whichis an 8-byte structure, as specified in SAM-5 (SCSI ArchitectureModel-5). The PE ID is encoded in the first 2 bytes, which isconventionally used for the LUN ID, and the vvol information, inparticular the SLLID, is encoded in the SCSI second level LUN ID,utilizing (a portion of) the remaining 6 bytes.

As further shown in FIG. 5A, data access layer 540 also includes anerror handling unit 542 for handling IO errors that are received throughthe in-band path from the storage system. In one embodiment, the IOerrors received by error handling unit 542 are propagated through thePEs by I/O manager 304. Examples of IO error classes include path errorsbetween computer system 101 and the PEs, PE errors, and vvol errors. Theerror handling unit 542 classifies all detected errors intoaforementioned classes. When a path error to a PE is encountered andanother path to the PE exists, data access layer 540 transmits the IOalong a different path to the PE. When the IO error is a PE error, errorhanding unit 542 updates block device database 533 to indicate an errorcondition for each block device issuing IOs through the PE. When the IOerror is a vvol error, error handing unit 542 updates block devicedatabase 533 to indicate an error condition for each block deviceassociated with the vvol. Error handing unit 542 may also issue an alarmor system event so that further IOs to block devices having the errorcondition will be rejected.

FIG. 5B is a block diagram of the computer system of FIG. 5A that hasbeen configured to interface with the storage system cluster of FIG. 2Binstead of the storage system cluster of FIG. 2A. In this embodiment,data access layer 540 includes an NFS client 545 and a device driver 546for NIC 503. NFS client 545 maps the block device name to a PE ID (IPaddress of NAS storage system) and a SLLID which is a NFS file handlecorresponding to the block device. This mapping is stored in blockdevice database 533 as shown in FIG. 5B. It should be noted that theActive and CIF columns are still present but not illustrated in theblock device database 533 shown in FIG. 5B. As will be described below,an NFS file handle uniquely identifies a file object within the NASstorage system, and may be generated during the bind process.Alternatively, in response to a request to bind the vvol, the NASstorage system returns the PE ID and the SLLID, and an open of the vvolusing regular in-band mechanisms (e.g., lookup or readdirplus) will givethe NFS file handle. NFS client 545 also translates the raw block-levelIOs received from virtual volume device driver 532 to NFS file-basedIOs. Device driver 546 for NIC 503 then formats the NFS file-based IOsin a protocol-compliant format and sends them to NIC 503, along with theNFS handle, for forwarding to one of the PEs via an in-band path.

FIG. 5C is a block diagram of another embodiment of a computer systemconfigured to implement virtual volumes. In this embodiment, computersystem 102 is configured with virtualization software, shown herein ashypervisor 560. Hypervisor 560 is installed on top of hardware platform550, which includes CPU 551, memory 552, NIC 553, and HBA 554, andsupports a virtual machine execution space 570 within which multiplevirtual machines (VMs) 571 ₁-571 _(N) may be concurrently instantiatedand executed. In one or more embodiments, hypervisor 560 and virtualmachines 571 are implemented using the VMware vSphere® productdistributed by VMware, Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. Each virtual machine571 implements a virtual hardware platform 573 that supports theinstallation of a guest operating system (OS) 572 which is capable ofexecuting applications 579. Examples of a guest OS 572 include any ofthe well-known commodity operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows,Linux, and the like. In each instance, guest OS 572 includes a nativefile system layer (not shown in FIG. 5C), for example, either an NTFS oran ext3FS type file system layer. These file system layers interfacewith virtual hardware platforms 573 to access, from the perspective ofguest OS 572, a data storage HBA, which in reality, is virtual HBA 574implemented by virtual hardware platform 573 that provides theappearance of disk storage support (in reality, virtual disks or virtualdisks 575 _(A)-575 _(X)) to enable execution of guest OS 572. In certainembodiments, virtual disks 575 _(A)-575 _(X) may appear to support, fromthe perspective of guest OS 572, the SCSI standard for connecting to thevirtual machine or any other appropriate hardware connection interfacestandard known to those with ordinary skill in the art, including IDE,ATA, and ATAPI. Although, from the perspective of guest OS 572, filesystem calls initiated by such guest OS 572 to implement filesystem-related data transfer and control operations appear to be routedto virtual disks 575 _(A)-575 _(X) for final execution, in reality, suchcalls are processed and passed through virtual HBA 574 to adjunctvirtual machine monitors (VMM) 561 ₁-561 _(N) that implement the virtualsystem support needed to coordinate operation with hypervisor 560. Inparticular, HBA emulator 562 functionally enables the data transfer andcontrol operations to be correctly handled by hypervisor 560 whichultimately passes such operations through its various layers to HBA 554that connect to storage systems 130.

According to embodiments described herein, each VM 571 has one or morevvols associated therewith and issues IOs to block device instances ofthe vvols created by hypervisor 560 pursuant to “CREATE DEVICE” calls byVM 571 into hypervisor 560. The association between block device namesand vvol IDs are maintained in block device database 580. IOs from VMs571 ₂-571 _(N) are received by a SCSI virtualization layer 563, whichconverts them into file IOs understood by a virtual machine file system(VMFS) driver 564. VMFS driver 564 then converts the file IOs to blockIOs, and provides the block IOs to virtual volume device driver 565. IOsfrom VM 571 ₁, on the other hand, are shown to bypass VMFS driver 564and provided directly to virtual volume device driver 565, signifyingthat VM 571 ₁ accesses its block device directly as a raw storagedevice, e.g., as a database disk, a log disk, a backup archive, and acontent repository, in the manner described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,155,558.

When virtual volume device driver 565 receives a block IO, it accessesblock device database 580 to reference a mapping between the blockdevice name specified in the IO and the PE ID and SLLID that define theIO session to the vvol associated with the block device name. In theexample shown herein, the block device names, dbase and log, correspondsto block device instances of vvol1 and vvol4, respectively, that werecreated for VM 571 ₁, and the block device names, vmdk2, vmdkn, andsnapn, correspond to block device instances of vvol12, vvol16, andvvol17, respectively, that were created for one or more of VMs 571 ₂-571_(N). Other information that is stored in block device database 580includes an active bit value for each block device that indicateswhether or not the block device is active, and a CIF(commands-in-flight) value. An active bit of “1” signifies that IOs canbe issued to the block device. An active bit of “0” signifies that theblock device is inactive and IOs cannot be issued to the block device.The CIF value provides an indication of how many IOs are in flight,i.e., issued but not completed.

In addition to performing the mapping described above, virtual volumedevice driver 565 issues raw block-level IOs to data access layer 566.Data access layer 566 includes device access layer 567, which appliescommand queuing and scheduling policies to the raw block-level IOs, anddevice driver 568 for HBA 554 which formats the raw block-level IOs in aprotocol-compliant format and sends them to HBA 554 for forwarding tothe PEs via an in-band path. In the embodiment where SCSI protocol isused, the vvol information is encoded in the SCSI LUN data field, whichis an 8-byte structure, as specified in SAM-5 (SCSI ArchitectureModel-5). The PE ID is encoded in the first 2 bytes, which isconventionally used for the LUN ID, and the vvol information, inparticular the SLLID, is encoded in the SCSI second level LUN ID,utilizing (a portion of) the remaining 6 bytes. As further shown in FIG.5C, data access layer 566 also includes an error handling unit 569,which functions in the same manner as error handling unit 542.

FIG. 5D is a block diagram of the computer system of FIG. 5C that hasbeen configured to interface with the storage system cluster of FIG. 2Binstead of the storage system cluster of FIG. 2A. In this embodiment,data access layer 566 includes an NFS client 585 and a device driver 586for NIC 553. NFS client 585 maps the block device name to a PE ID (IPaddress) and SLLID (NFS file handle) corresponding to the block device.This mapping is stored in block device database 580 as shown in FIG. 5D.It should be noted that the Active and CIF columns are still present butnot illustrated in the block device database 580 shown in FIG. 5D. Aswill be described below, an NFS file handle uniquely identifies a fileobject within the NFS, and is generated during the bind process in oneembodiment. NFS client 585 also translates the raw block-level IOsreceived from virtual volume device driver 565 to NFS file-based IOs.Device driver 586 for NIC 553 then formats the NFS file-based IOs in aprotocol-compliant format and sends them to NIC 553, along with the NFShandle, for forwarding to one of the PEs via an in-band path.

It should be recognized that the various terms, layers andcategorizations used to describe the components in FIGS. 5A-5D may bereferred to differently without departing from their functionality orthe spirit or scope of the invention. For example, VMM 561 may beconsidered separate virtualization components between VM 571 andhypervisor 560 (which, in such a conception, may itself be considered avirtualization “kernel” component) since there exists a separate VMM foreach instantiated VM. Alternatively, each VMM 561 may be considered tobe a component of its corresponding virtual machine since such VMMincludes the hardware emulation components for the virtual machine. Insuch an alternative conception, for example, the conceptual layerdescribed as virtual hardware platform 573 may be merged with and intoVMM 561 such that virtual host bus adapter 574 is removed from FIGS. 5Cand 5D (i.e., since its functionality is effectuated by host bus adapteremulator 562).

FIG. 6 is a simplified block diagram of a computer environment thatillustrates components and communication paths used to manage vvolsaccording to an embodiment of the invention. As previously described,the communication path for IO protocol traffic is referred to as thein-band path and is shown in FIG. 6 as dashed line 601 that connectsdata access layer 540 of the computer system (through an HBA or NICprovided in the computer system) with one or more PEs configured instorage systems 130. The communication paths used to manage vvols areout-of-band paths (as previously defined, paths that are not “in-band”)and shown in FIG. 6 as solid lines 602. According to embodimentsdescribed herein, vvols can be managed through plug-in 612 provided inmanagement server 610 and/or plug-in 622 provided in each of computersystems 103, only one of which is shown in FIG. 6. On the storage deviceside, a management interface 625 is configured by storage system manager131 and a management interface 626 is configured by storage systemmanager 132. In addition, a management interface 624 is configured bydistributed storage system manager 135. Each management interfacecommunicates with plug-ins 612, 622. To facilitate issuing and handlingof management commands, special application programming interfaces(APIs) have been developed. It should be recognized that, in oneembodiment, both plug-ins 612, 622 are customized to communicate withstorage hardware from a particular storage system vendor. Therefore,management server 610 and computer systems 103 will employ differentplug-ins when communicating with storage hardware for different storagesystem vendors. In another embodiment, there may be a single plug-inthat interacts with any vendor's management interface. This wouldrequire the storage system manager to be programmed to a well-knowninterface (e.g., by virtue of being published by the computer systemand/or the management server).

Management server 610 is further configured with a system manager 611for managing the computer systems. In one embodiment, the computersystems are executing virtual machines and system manager 611 managesthe virtual machines running in the computer systems. One example ofsystem manager 611 that manages virtual machines is the vSphere® productdistributed by VMware, Inc. As shown, system manager 611 communicateswith a host daemon (hostd) 621 running in computer system 103 (throughappropriate hardware interfaces at both management server 610 andcomputer system 103) to receive resource usage reports from computersystem 103 and to initiate various management operations on applicationsrunning in computer system 103.

FIG. 7 is a flow diagram of method steps for authenticating a computersystem to the storage system cluster of FIG. 2A or 2B using anauthentication related API. These method steps are initiated when acomputer system requests authentication by transmitting its securesocket layer (SSL) certificate to the storage system. At step 710, thestorage system issues a prompt for authentication credentials (e.g.,username and password) to the computer system requesting authentication.Upon receipt of the authentication credentials at step 712, the storagesystem compares them against stored credentials at step 714. If thecorrect credentials are provided, the storage system stores the SSLcertificate of the authenticated computer system in a key store (step716). If incorrect credentials are provided, the storage system ignoresthe SSL certificate and returns an appropriate error message (step 718).Subsequent to being authenticated, the computer system may invoke theAPIs to issue management commands to the storage system over SSL links,and unique context IDs included in the SSL certificates are used by thestorage system to enforce certain policies such as defining whichcomputer systems may access which storage containers. In someembodiments, context IDs of the computer systems may be used in managingpermissions granted to them. For example, a host computer may bepermitted to create a vvol, but may not be permitted to delete the vvolor snapshot the vvol, or a host computer may be permitted to create asnapshot of a vvol, but may not be permitted to clone the vvol. Inaddition, permissions may vary in accordance with user-level privilegesof users who are logged into authenticated computer systems.

FIG. 8 is a flow diagram of method steps for creating a virtual volumeusing a create virtual volumes API command. In one embodiment, computersystem 103 issues the create virtual volumes API command to the storagesystem via out-of-band path 602 when, at step 802, computer system 103receives a request to create a vvol having certain size and storagecapability profiles, such as minimum IOPS and average latency, from oneof its applications. In response, computer system 103, at step 804,selects a storage container (among those that computer system 103 andthe requesting application is permitted to access and have sufficientfree capacity to accommodate the request) and issues the create virtualvolumes API command via plug-in 622 to the storage system. The APIcommand includes a storage container ID, vvol size, and storagecapability profiles of the vvol. In another embodiment, the API commandincludes a set of key-value pairs that the application requires thestorage system to store with the newly created vvol. In anotherembodiment, management server 610 issues the create virtual volumes APIcommand (via plug-in 612) to the storage system via out-of-band path602.

At step 806, the storage system manager receives the request to generatethe vvol via the management interface (e.g., management interface 624,625, or 626) and accesses the selected storage container's metadatasection in container database 316 to verify that the request contextcomprising the computer system 103 and application has sufficientpermissions to create a vvol in the selected storage container. In oneembodiment, an error message is returned to computer system 103 if thepermission level is not sufficient. If the permission level issufficient, a unique vvol ID is generated at step 810. Then at step 812,the storage system manager scans the allocation bitmap in the metadatasection of container database 316 to determine free partitions of theselected storage container. The storage system manager allocates thefree partitions of the selected storage container sufficient toaccommodate the requested vvol size, and updates the allocation bitmapin the storage container's metadata section of container database 316.The storage system manager also updated vvol database 314 with a newvvol entry. The new vvol entry includes the vvol ID generated at step810, ordered list of newly allocated storage container extents, andmetadata of the new vvol expressed as key-value pairs. Then, at step814, the storage system manager transmits the vvol ID to computer system103. At step 816, computer system 103 associates the vvol ID with theapplication that requested creation of the vvol. In one embodiment, oneor more vvol descriptor files are maintained for each application andthe vvol ID is written into a vvol descriptor file maintained for theapplication that requested the creation of the vvol.

As shown in FIGS. 2A and 2B, not all vvols are connected to PEs. A vvolthat is not connected to a PE is not aware of IOs issued by acorresponding application because an IO session is not established tothe vvol. Before IOs can be issued to a vvol, the vvol undergoes a bindprocess as a result of which the vvol will be bound to a particular PE.Once a vvol is bound to a PE, IOs can be issued to the vvol until thevvol is unbound from the PE.

In one embodiment, the bind request is issued by computer system 103 viaan out-of-band path 602 to the storage system using a bind virtualvolume API. The bind request identifies the vvol to be bound (using thevvol ID) and in response the storage system binds the vvol to a PE towhich computer system 103 is connected via an in-band path. FIG. 9A is aflow diagram of method steps for the computer system to discover PEs towhich it is connected via an in-band path. PEs configured in SCSIprotocol-based storage devices are discovered via an in-band path usingthe standard SCSI command, REPORT_LUNS. PEs configured in NFSprotocol-based storage devices are discovered via an out-of-band pathusing an API. The method steps of FIG. 9A are carried out by thecomputer system for each connected storage system.

At step 910, the computer system determines whether the connectedstorage system is SCSI protocol-based or NFS protocol-based. If thestorage system is SCSI protocol-based, the SCSI command, REPORT_LUNS, isissued by the computer system in-band to the storage system (step 912).Then, at step 913, the computer system examines the response from thestorage system, in particular the PE bit associated with each of the PEIDs that are returned, to distinguish between the PE-related LUNs andthe convention data LUNs. If the storage system is NFS protocol-based,an API call is issued by the computer system out-of-band from plug-in622 to the management interface (e.g., management interface 624, 625, or626) to get IDs of available PEs (step 914). At step 916, which followssteps 913 and 914, the computer system stores the PE IDs of PE-relatedLUNs returned by the storage system or the PE IDs returned by themanagement interface, for use during a bind process. It should berecognized that the PE IDs returned by SCSI protocol-based storagedevices each include a WWN, and the PE IDs returned by NFSprotocol-based storage devices each include an IP address and mountpoint.

FIG. 9B is a flow diagram of method steps for the storage system manager131 or storage system manager 132 or distributed storage system manager135 (hereinafter referred to as “the storage system manager”) todiscover PEs to which a given computer system 103 is connected via anin-band path. The discovery of such PEs by a storage system managerenables the storage system to return to a requesting computer system, avalid PE ID, onto which the computer system can be actually connected,in response to a bind request from the computer system. At step 950, thestorage system manager issues an out-of-band “Discover_Topology” APIcall to the computer system 103 via the management interface and plug-in622. Computer system 103 returns its system ID and a list of all PE IDsthat it discovered via the flow diagram of FIG. 9A. In one embodiment,the storage system manager executes step 950 by issuing a“Discover_Topology” API call to management server 610 via the managementinterface and plug-in 612. In such an embodiment, the storage systemwill receive a response that contains multiple computer system IDs andassociated PE IDs, one for each computer system 103 that managementserver 610 manages. Then, at step 952, the storage system managerprocesses the results from step 950. For example, the storage systemmanager clears the list of all PE IDs that are not under its currentcontrol. For example, certain PE IDs received by the storage systemmanager 135 when issuing a Discover_Topology call may correspond toanother storage system connected to the same computer system. Similarly,certain received PE IDs may correspond to older PEs that were sincedeleted by the storage system administrator, and so on. At step 954, thestorage system manager caches the processed results for use duringsubsequent bind requests. In one embodiment, the storage system managerruns the steps of FIG. 9B periodically to update its cached results withongoing computer system and network topology changes. In anotherembodiment, the storage system manager runs the steps of FIG. 9B everytime it receives a new vvol creation request. In yet another embodiment,the storage system manager runs the steps of FIG. 9B after running theauthentication steps of FIG. 7.

FIG. 10 is a flow diagram of method steps for issuing and executing avirtual volume bind request using a bind virtual volume API. In oneembodiment, computer system 103 issues the bind request to the storagesystem via out-of-band path 602 when one of its applications requests IOaccess to a block device associated with a vvol that has not yet beenbound to a PE. In another embodiment, management server 610 issues thebind request in connection with certain VM management operations,including VM power on and vvol migration from one storage container toanother.

Continuing with the example described above where an applicationrequests IO access to a block device associated with vvol that has notyet been bound to a PE, computer system 103 at step 1002 determines fromthe block device database 533 (or 580), the vvol ID of the vvol. Then,at step 1004, computer system 103 issues through the out-of-band path602 a request to bind the vvol to the storage system.

The storage system manager receives the request to bind the vvol via themanagement interface (e.g., management interface 624, 625, or 626) atstep 1006, and then carries out step 1008, which includes selecting a PEto which the vvol is to be bound, generating SLLID and generation numberfor the selected PE, and updating connection database 312 (e.g., via IOmanager 304). The selection of the PE to which the vvol is to be boundis made according to connectivity, i.e., only the PEs that have anexisting in-band connection to computer system 103 are available forselection, and other factors, such as current IO traffic through theavailable PEs. In one embodiment, the storage system selects from theprocessed and cached list of PEs the computer system 103 sent to itaccording to the method of FIG. 9B. SLLID generation differs between theembodiment employing the storage system cluster of FIG. 2A and theembodiment employing the storage system cluster of FIG. 2B. In theformer case, an SLLID that is unique for the selected PE is generated.In the latter case, a file path to the file object corresponding to thevvol is generated as the SLLID. After the SLLID and the generationnumber have been generated for the selected PEs, connection database 312is updated to include newly generated IO session to the vvol. Then, atstep 1010, ID of the selected PE, the generated SLLID, and thegeneration number are returned to computer system 103. Optionally, inthe embodiment employing the storage system cluster of FIG. 2B, a uniqueNFS file handle may be generated for the file object corresponding tothe vvol and returned to computer system 103 along with the ID of theselected PE, the generated SLLID, and the generation number. At step1012, computer system 103 updates block device database 533 (or 580) toinclude the PE ID, the SLLID (and optionally, the NFS handle), and thegeneration number returned from the storage system. In particular, eachset of PE ID, SLLID (and optionally, the NFS handle), and the generationnumber returned from storage system will be added as a new entry toblock device database 533 (or 580). It should be recognized that thegeneration number is used to guard against replay attacks. Therefore, inembodiments where replay attacks are not a concern, the generationnumber is not used.

On subsequent bind requests to the same vvol initiated by a differentapplication desiring to issue IOs to the same vvol, the storage systemmanager may bind the vvol to the same or different PE. If the vvol isbound to the same PE, the storage system manager returns the ID of thesame PE and the SLLID previously generated, and increments the referencecount of this IO connection path stored in connection database 312. Onthe other hand, if the vvol is bound to a different PE, the storagesystem manager generates a new SLLID and returns the ID of the differentPE and the newly generated SLLID and adds this new IO connection path tothe vvol as a new entry to connection database 312.

A virtual volume unbind request may be issued using an unbind virtualvolume API. An unbind request includes the PE ID and SLLID of the IOconnection path by which a vvol has been previously bound. Theprocessing of the unbind request is, however, advisory. The storagesystem manager is free to unbind the vvol from a PE immediately or aftera delay. The unbind request is processed by updating connection database312 to decrement the reference count of the entry containing the PE IDand SLLID. If the reference count is decremented to zero, the entry maybe deleted. It should be noted, in this case, that the vvol continues toexist, but is not available for IO using the given PE ID and SLLID anymore.

In the case of a vvol that implements a virtual disk of a VM, thereference count for this vvol will be at least one. When the VM ispowered-off and an unbind request is issued in connection therewith, thereference count will be decremented by one. If the reference count iszero, the vvol entry may be removed from connection database 312. Ingeneral, removing entries from connection database 312 is beneficialbecause I/O manager 304 manages less data and can also recycle SLLIDs.Such benefits become significant when the total number of vvols storedby the storage system is large (e.g., in the order of millions of vvols)but the total number of vvols being actively accessed by applications issmall (e.g., tens of thousands of VMs). Additionally, when a vvol is notbound to any PEs, the storage system has greater flexibility in choosingwhere to store the vvol in DSUs 141. For example, the storage system canbe implemented with asymmetrical, hierarchical DSUs 141, where some DSUs141 provide faster data access and others provide slower data access(e.g., to save on storage costs). In one implementation, when a vvol isnot bound to any PE (which can be determined by checking the referencecount of entries of the vvol in connection database 312), the storagesystem can migrate the vvol to a slower and/or cheaper type of physicalstorage. Then, once the vvol is bound to a PE, the storage system canmigrate the vvol to a faster type of physical storage. It should berecognized that such migrations can be accomplished by changing one ormore elements of the ordered list of container locations that make upthe given vvol in the vvol database 314, and updating the correspondingextent allocation bitmap in the metadata section of container database316.

Binding and unbinding vvols to PEs enables the storage system manager todetermine vvol liveness. The storage system manager may take advantageof this information to perform storage system vendor-specificoptimizations on non-IO-serving (passive) and IO-serving (active) vvols.For example, the storage system manager may be configured to relocate avvol from a low-latency (high cost) SSD to a mid-latency (low cost) harddrive if it remains in a passive state beyond a particular threshold oftime.

FIGS. 11A and 11B are flow diagrams of method steps for issuing an IO toa virtual volume, according to one embodiment. FIG. 11A is a flowdiagram of method steps 1100 for issuing an IO from an applicationdirectly to a raw block device and FIG. 11B is a flow diagram of methodsteps 1120 for issuing an IO from an application through a file systemdriver.

Method 1100 begins at step 1102, where an application, such asapplication 512 shown in FIGS. 5A-5B or VM 571 shown in FIG. 5C-5D,issues an IO to a raw block device. At step 1104, virtual volume devicedriver 532 or 565 generates a raw block-level IO from the IO issued bythe application. At step 1106, the name of the raw block device istranslated to a PE ID and SLLID by virtual volume device driver 532 or565 (and also to an NFS handle by NFS client 545 or 585 in theembodiment employing the storage device of FIG. 2B). At step 1108, thedata access layer 540 or 566 carries out the encoding of the PE ID andSLLID (and also the NFS handle in the embodiment employing the storagedevice of FIG. 2B) into the raw block-level IO. Then, at step 1110, theHBA/NIC issues the raw block-level IO.

For non-VM applications, such as application 512 shown in FIGS. 5A-5B,method 1120 begins at step 1121. At step 1121, the application issues anIO to a file stored on a vvol-based block device. Then, at step 1122,the file system driver, e.g., file system driver 510, generates ablock-level IO from the file IO. After step 1122, steps 1126, 1128, and1130, which are identical to steps 1106, 1108, and 1110, are carriedout.

For VM applications, such as VM 571 shown in FIG. 5C-5D, method 1120begins at step 1123. At step 1123, the VM issues an IO to its virtualdisk. Then, at step 1124, this IO is translated to a file IO, e.g., bySCSI virtualization layer 563. The file system driver, e.g., VMFS driver564, then generates a block-level IO from the file IO at step 1125.After step 1125, steps 1126, 1128, and 1130, which are identical tosteps 1106, 1108, and 1110, are carried out.

FIG. 12 is a flow diagram of method steps for performing an IO at astorage system, according to one embodiment. At step 1210, an IO issuedby a computer system is received through one of the PEs configured inthe storage system. The IO is parsed by IO manager 304 at step 1212.After step 1212, step 1214 a is carried out by IO manager 304 if thestorage system cluster is of the type shown in FIG. 2A and step 1214 bis carried out by IO manager 304 if the storage system cluster is of thetype shown in FIG. 2B. At step 1214 a, IO manager 304 extracts the SLLIDfrom the parsed IO and accesses connection database 312 to determine thevvol ID corresponding to the PE ID and the extracted SLLID. At step 1214b, IO manager 304 extracts the NFS handle from the parsed IO andidentifies the vvol using the PE ID and the NFS handle as the SLLID.Step 1216 is carried out after steps 1214 a and 1214 b. At step 1216,vvol database 314 and container database 316 are accessed by volumemanager 306 and container manager 308, respectively, to obtain physicalstorage locations on which the IO is to be performed. Then, at step1218, data access layer 310 performs the IO on the physical storagelocations obtained at step 1216.

In some situations, an application (application 512 or VM 571),management server 610, and/or the storage system manager may determinethat a binding of a vvol to a particular PE is experiencing issues, suchas when the PE becomes overloaded with too many bindings. As a way toresolve such issues, a bound vvol may be rebound by the storage systemmanager to a different PE, even while IO commands are being directed tothe vvol. FIG. 13 is a flow diagram of method steps 1300 for issuing andexecuting a vvol rebind request, according to one embodiment, using arebind API.

As shown, method 1300 begins at step 1302, where the storage systemmanager determines that a vvol should be bound to a second PE that isdifferent from a first PE to which the vvol is currently bound. At step1304, the storage system manager issues via an out-of-band path arequest to a computer system (e.g., computer system 103) running anapplication issuing IO to the vvol to rebind the vvol. At step 1306,computer system 103 receives from the storage system manager the rebindrequest and, in response, issues a request to bind the vvol to a new PE.At step 1308, the storage system manager receives the rebind requestand, in response, binds the vvol to the new PE. At step 1310, thestorage system manager transmits to the computer system an ID of the newPE to which the vvol is now also bound and an SLLID to access the vvol,as described above in conjunction with FIG. 10.

At step 1312, the computer system receives from the storage systemmanager the new PE ID and the SLLID. In block device database 533 or580, the active bit of the new PE connection is set to 1 initially,meaning that a new IO session for the vvol via the new PE has beenestablished. The computer system also sets the active bit of the firstPE connection to 0, signifying that no more IOs can be issued to thevvol through this PE connection. It should be recognized that this PEconnection should not be unbound immediately upon deactivation becausethere may be IOs to the vvol through this PE connection that may bein-flight, i.e., issued but not completed. Therefore, at step 1314, thecomputer system accesses block device database 533 or 580 to see if all“commands in flight” (CIFs) issued to the vvol through the first PEconnection have been completed, i.e., if CIF=0. The computer systemwaits for the CIF to go to zero before executing step 1318. In themeantime, additional IOs to the vvol are issued through the new PE sincethe active bit of the new PE connection is already set to 1. When theCIF does reach zero, step 1318 is carried out where a request to unbindthe first PE connection is issued to the storage system manager. Then,at step 1320, the storage system manager unbinds the vvol from the firstPE. Also, the computer system issues all additional IOs to the vvolthrough the new PE at step 1324.

FIG. 14 is a conceptual diagram of a lifecycle of a virtual volume,according to one embodiment. All commands shown in FIG. 14, namely,create, snapshot, clone, bind, unbind, extend, and delete form a vvolmanagement command set, and are accessible through plug-ins 612, 622described above in conjunction with FIG. 6. As shown, when a vvol isgenerated as a result of any of the following commands—create vvol,snapshot vvol, or clone vvol—the generated vvol remains in a “passive”state, where the vvol is not bound to a particular PE, and thereforecannot receive IOs. In addition, when any of the followingcommands—snapshot vvol, clone vvol, or extend vvol—is executed when thevvol is in a passive state, the original vvol and the newly created vvol(if any) remains in the passive state. As also shown, when a vvol in apassive state is bound to a PE, the vvol enters an “active” state.Conversely, when an active vvol is unbound from a PE, the vvol enters apassive state, assuming that the vvol is not bound to any additionalPEs. When any of the following commands—snapshot vvol, clone vvol,extend vvol, or rebind vvol—is executed when the vvol is in an activestate, the original vvol remains in the active state and the newlycreated vvol (if any) remains in the passive state.

As described above, a VM may have multiple virtual disks and a separatevvol is created for each virtual disk. The VM also has metadata filesthat describe the configurations of the VM. The metadata files includeVM configuration file, VM log files, disk descriptor files, one for eachof the virtual disks for the VM, a VM swap file, etc. A disk descriptorfile for a virtual disk contains information relating to the virtualdisk such as its vvol ID, its size, whether the virtual disk is thinlyprovisioned, and identification of one or more snapshots created for thevirtual disk, etc. The VM swap file provides a swap space of the VM onthe storage system. In one embodiment, these VM configuration files arestored in a vvol, and this vvol is referred to herein as a metadatavvol.

FIG. 15 is a flow diagram of method steps for provisioning a VM,according to an embodiment. In this embodiment, management server 610, acomputer system hosting the VM, e.g., computer system 102 shown in FIG.5C (hereinafter referred to as the “host computer”), and the storagesystem cluster of FIG. 2A, in particular storage system manager 131,132, or 135, are used. As illustrated, the storage system managerreceives the request to provision the VM at step 1502. This may be arequest generated when a VM administrator using appropriate userinterfaces to management server 610 issues a command to managementserver 610 to provision a VM having a certain size and storagecapability profiles. In response thereto, at step 1504, managementserver 610 initiates the method for creating a vvol to contain the VM'smetadata (hereinafter referred to as “metadata vvol”) in the mannerdescribed above in conjunction with FIG. 8, pursuant to which thestorage system manager at step 1508 creates the metadata vvol andreturns the vvol ID of the metadata vvol to management server 610. Atstep 1514, management server 610 registers the vvol ID of the metadatavvol back to a computer system hosting the VM. At step 1516, the hostcomputer initiates the method for binding the metadata vvol to a PE inthe manner described above in conjunction with FIG. 10, pursuant towhich the storage system manager at step 1518 binds the metadata vvol toa PE and returns the PE ID and a SLLID to the host computer.

At step 1522, the host computer creates a block device instance of themetadata vvol using the “CREATE DEVICE” call into the host computer'soperating system. Then, at step 1524, the host computer creates a filesystem (e.g., VMFS) on the block device in response to which a filesystem ID (FSID) is returned. The host computer, at step 1526, mountsthe file system having the returned FSID, and stores the metadata of theVM into the namespace associated with this file system. Examples of themetadata include VM log files, disk descriptor files, one for each ofthe virtual disks for the VM, and a VM swap file.

At step 1528, the host computer initiates the method for creating a vvolfor each of the virtual disks of the VM (each such vvol referred toherein as “data vvol”) in the manner described above in conjunction withFIG. 8, pursuant to which the storage system manager at step 1530creates the data vvol and returns the vvol ID of the data vvol to thehost computer. At step 1532, the host computer stores the ID of the datavvol in the disk descriptor file for the virtual disk. The method endswith the unbinding of the metadata vvol (not shown) after data vvolshave been created for all of the virtual disks of the VM.

FIG. 16A is a flow diagram of method steps for powering ON a VM afterthe VM has been provisioned in the manner described in conjunction withFIG. 15. FIG. 16B is a flow diagram of method steps for powering OFF aVM after the VM has been powered ON. These two methods are carried outby a host computer for the VM.

Upon receiving a VM power ON command at step 1608, the ID of themetadata vvol corresponding to the VM is retrieved at step 1610. Then,at step 1612 the metadata vvol undergoes a bind process as describedabove in conjunction with FIG. 10. The file system is mounted on themetadata vvol at step 1614 so that the metadata files for the datavvols, in particular the disk descriptor files, can be read and datavvol IDs obtained at step 1616. The data vvols then undergo a bindprocess, one by one, as described above in conjunction with FIG. 10 atstep 1618.

Upon receiving a VM power OFF command at step 1620, the data vvols ofthe VM are marked as inactive in the block device database (e.g., blockdevice database 580 of FIG. 5C) and the host computer waits for the CIFsassociated with each of the data vvols to reach zero (step 1622). As theCIF associated with each data vvol reaches zero, the host computer atstep 1624 requests the storage system to unbind that data vvol. Afterthe CIFs associated with all data vvols reach zero, the metadata vvol ismarked as inactive in the block device database at step 1626. Then, atstep 1628, when the CIF associated with the metadata vvol reaches zero,the host computer at step 1630 requests the metadata vvol to be unbound.

FIGS. 17 and 18 are flow diagrams of method steps for reprovisioning aVM. In the examples illustrated herein, FIG. 17 is a flow diagram ofmethod steps executed on the host computer, for extending the size of avvol of a VM, in particular a data vvol for a virtual disk of the VM,and FIG. 18 is a flow diagram of method steps executed in the storagesystem, for moving a vvol of VM between storage containers.

The method for extending the size of a data vvol for a VM's virtual diskbegins at step 1708 where the host computer determines if the VM ispowered ON. If the host computer determines at step 1708 that the VM isnot powered ON, the host computer retrieves the ID of the metadata vvolcorresponding to the VM at step 1710. Then, the bind process for themetadata vvol is initiated by the host computer at step 1712. After thebind, at step 1714, the host computer mounts a file system on themetadata vvol and retrieves the ID of the data vvol corresponding to thevirtual disk from the disk descriptor file for the virtual disk, whichis a file in the file system mounted on the metadata vvol. Then, at step1716, the host computer sends an extend-vvol API call to the storagesystem at step 1716, where the extend-vvol API call includes the ID ofthe data vvol and the new size of the data vvol.

If the VM is powered ON, the host computer retrieves the ID of the datavvol of VM's virtual disk to be extended at step 1715. It should berecognized from the method of FIG. 16A that this ID can be obtained fromthe disk descriptor file associated with the VM's virtual disk. Then, atstep 1716, the host computer sends an extend-vvol API call to thestorage system at step 1716, where the extend-vvol API call includes theID of the data vvol and the new size of the data vvol.

The extend-vvol API call results in the vvol database and the containerdatabase (e.g., vvol database 314 and container database 316 of FIG. 3)being updated in the storage system to reflect the increased addressspace of the vvol. Upon receiving acknowledgement that the extend-vvolAPI call has completed, the host computer at step 1718 updates the diskdescriptor file for the VM's virtual disk with the new size. Then, atstep 1720, the host computer determines if the VM is powered ON. If itis not, the host computer at step 1722 unmounts the file system andsends a request to unbind the metadata vvol to the storage system. If,on the other hand, the VM is powered ON, the method terminates.

The method for moving a vvol of a VM, currently bound to a PE, from asource storage container to a destination storage container, where boththe source storage container and the destination storage container arewithin the scope of the same storage system manager, begins at step 1810where the container IDs of the source and destination storage containers(SC1 and SC2, respectively) and the vvol ID of the vvol to be moved arereceived. Then, at step 1812, the vvol database (e.g., vvol database 314of FIG. 3) and the extent allocation bitmap of the container database(e.g., container database 316 of FIG. 3) are updated as follows. First,the storage system manager removes the vvol extents in SC1 from SC1'sentry in the container database 316, and then assigns these extents toSC2 by modifying SC2's entry in the container database 316. In oneembodiment, the storage system may compensate for the loss of storagecapacity (due to removal of vvol storage extents) in SC1 by assigningnew spindle extents to SC1, and make up for the increase in storagecapacity (due to addition of vvol storage extents) in SC2 by removingsome unused spindle extents from SC2. At step 1814, the storage systemmanager determines whether the currently bound PE is able to optimallyservice IO to the vvol's new location. An example instance when thecurrent PE is unable to service IO to the vvol's new location is if thestorage administrator has statically configured the storage systemmanager to assign different PEs to vvols from different customers andhence different storage containers. If the current PE is unable toservice IO to the vvol, the vvol, at step 1815, undergoes a rebindprocess (and associated changes to a connection database, e.g., theconnection database 312 of FIG. 3) which is described above inconjunction with FIG. 13. After step 1815, step 1816 is carried out,where an acknowledgement of successful move completion is returned tothe host computer. If, at step 1814, the storage system managerdetermines that the current PE is able to service IO to the new locationof the vvol, step 1815 is bypassed and step 1816 is performed next.

When a vvol is moved between incompatible storage containers, e.g.,between storage containers created in storage devices of differentmanufacturers, data movement is executed between storage containers inaddition to the changes to the container database 316, the vvol database314, and the connection database 312. In one embodiment, data movementtechniques described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/129,323,filed May 29, 2008 and entitled “Offloading Storage Operations toStorage Hardware,” the entire contents of which are incorporated byreference herein, are employed.

FIG. 19 is a flow diagram of method steps executed in the host computerand the storage system for cloning a VM from a template VM. This methodbegins at step 1908 where the host computer sends a request to create ametadata vvol for the new VM to the storage system. At 1910, the storagesystem creates a metadata vvol for the new VM in accordance with themethod described above in conjunction with FIG. 8 and returns the newmetadata vvol ID to the host computer. Then, at step 1914, a clone-vvolAPI call is issued from the host computer to the storage system viaout-of-band path 601 for all data vvol IDs belonging to the template VM.At step 1918, the storage system manager checks to see whether or notthe data vvols of the template VM and the new VM are compatible. Itshould be recognized that the data vvols may be not be compatible ifcloning occurs between storage containers created in storage systems ofdifferent manufacturers. If there is compatibility, step 1919 is carriedout. At step 1919, the storage system manager creates new data vvols bygenerating new data vvol IDs, updating the allocation bitmap incontainer database 316, and adding new vvol entries to vvol database314, and copies content stored in data vvols of the template VM to datavvols of the new VM. At step 1920, the storage system manager returnsthe new data vvol IDs to the host computer. The receipt of the new datavvol IDs provides confirmation to the host computer that the data vvolcloning completed without error. Then, at step 1925, the host computerissues an IO to the metadata vvol of the new VM to update the metadatafiles, in particular the disk descriptor files, with newly generateddata vvol IDs. The IO issued by the host computer to the storage systemis executed by the storage system at step 1926, as a result of which thedisk descriptor files of the new VM are updated with the newly generateddata vvol IDs.

If, at step 1918, the storage system manager determines that the datavvols of the template VM and the new VM are not compatible, an errormessage is returned to the host computer. Upon receipt of this errormessage, the host computer at step 1921 issues a create-vvol API call tothe storage system to create new data vvols. At step 1922, the storagesystem manager creates new data vvols by generating new data vvol IDs,updating the allocation bitmap in container database 316, and adding newvvol entries to vvol database 314, and returns the new data vvol IDs tothe host computer. At step 1923, the host computer executes datamovement according to techniques described in U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 12/356,694, filed Jan. 21, 2009 and entitled “Data Mover forComputer System,” the entire contents of which are incorporated byreference herein (step 1923). After step 1923, steps 1925 and 1926 arecarried out as described above.

FIG. 20 is a flow diagram of method steps for provisioning a VM,according to another embodiment. In this embodiment, management server610, a computer system hosting the VM, e.g., computer system 102 shownin FIG. 5D (hereinafter referred to as the “host computer”), and thestorage system cluster of FIG. 2B, in particular storage system manager131 or storage system manager 132 or storage system manager 135, areused. As illustrated, the request to provision the VM is received atstep 2002. This may be a request generated when a VM administrator usingappropriate user interfaces to management server 610 issues a command tomanagement server 610 to provision a VM having a certain size andstorage capability profiles. In response thereto, at step 2004,management server 610 initiates the method for creating a vvol tocontain the VM's metadata, in particular a metadata vvol, in the mannerdescribed above in conjunction with FIG. 8, pursuant to which thestorage system manager at step 2008 creates the metadata vvol, which isa file in the NAS device, and returns the metadata vvol ID to managementserver 610. At step 2020, management server 610 registers the vvol ID ofthe metadata vvol back to the host computer. At step 2022, the hostcomputer issues a bind request for the metadata vvol ID to the storagesystem, in response to which the storage system at step 2023 returns anIP address and directory path as PE ID and SLLID, respectively. At step2024, the host computer mounts the directory at the specified IP addressand directory path, and stores metadata files in the mounted directory.In the embodiment using NFS, NFS client 545 or 585 may resolve the givenIP address and directory path into a NFS handle in order to issue NFSrequests to such directory.

At step 2026, the host computer initiates the method for creating a datavvol for each of the virtual disks of the VM in the manner describedabove in conjunction with FIG. 8, pursuant to which the storage systemmanager at step 2030 creates the data vvol and returns the vvol ID ofthe data vvol to the host computer. At step 2032, the host computerstores the ID of the data vvol in the disk descriptor file for thevirtual disk. The method ends with the unbinding of the metadata vvol(not shown) after data vvols have been created for all of the virtualdisks of the VM.

As described above in conjunction with FIG. 8, when a new vvol iscreated from a storage container and a storage capability profile is notexplicitly specified for the new vvol, the new vvol will inherit thestorage capability profile associated with the storage container. Thestorage capability profile associated with the storage container may beselected from one of several different profiles. For example, as shownin FIG. 21, the different profiles include a production (prod) profile2101, a development (dev) profile 2102, and a test profile 2103(collectively referred to herein as “profiles 2100”). It should berecognized that many other profiles may be defined. As shown, eachprofile entry of a particular profile is of a fixed type or a variabletype, and has a name and one or more values associated with it. A fixedtype profile entry has a fixed number of selectable items. For example,the profile entry “Replication” may be set to be TRUE or FALSE. Incontrast, a variable type profile entry does not have pre-definedselections. Instead, a default value and a range of values are set for avariable type profile entry, and the user may select any value that iswithin the range. If no value is specified, the default value is used.In the example profiles 2100 shown in FIG. 21, variable type profileentries has three numbers separated by commas. The first number is thelower end of the specified range, and the second number is the higherend of the specified range. The third number is the default value. Thus,a vvol that inherits the storage capability profile defined inproduction profile 2101 will be replicated (Replication.Value=TRUE), andthe recovery time objective (RTO) for the replication may be defined inthe range of 0.1 to 24 hours, the default being 1 hour. In addition,snapshots are allowed for this vvol (Snapshot.Value=TRUE). The number ofsnapshots that are retained is in the range of 1 to 100, the defaultbeing 1, and the frequency of snapshots is in the range of once per hourto once per 24 hours, the default being once per hour. The SnapInheritcolumn indicates whether the given profile attribute (and its values)should be propagated to a derivative vvol when a given vvol issnapshotted to create a new vvol that is a derivative vvol. In theexample of production profile 2101, only the first two profile entries(Replication and RTO) may be propagated to a snapshot vvol of the givenvvol with production profile 2101. The values of all other attributes ofthe snapshot vvol will be set to the default values specified in theprofile. In other words, any customizations (for example, a non-defaultvalue of snapshot frequency) of these other attribute on the given vvolwill not be propagated to the snapshot vvol due to their correspondingSnapInherit column being FALSE. The profile also contains other columnssuch as CloneInherit (not shown), and ReplicaInherit (not shown) thatcontrol which attribute values are propagated to clones and replicas,respectively, of a given vvol.

When a storage container is created according to the method of FIG. 4,types of storage capability profiles that can be defined for vvolscreated from the storage container may be set. The flow diagram in FIG.21 illustrates the method for creating a storage container shown in FIG.4 with step 2110 inserted between steps 412 and 413. At step 2110, thestorage administrator selects one or more of profiles 2100 for thestorage container being created. For example, a storage containercreated for one customer may be associated with production profile 2101and development profile 2102, such that a vvol that is of a productiontype will inherit the storage capability profile defined in productionprofile 2101 with default values or customer specified values, as thecase may be, and a vvol that is of a development type will inherit thestorage capability profile defined in development profile 2102 withdefault values or customer specified values, as the case may be.

FIG. 22 is a flow diagram that illustrates method steps executed bystorage system manager 131, 132, or 135, for creating a vvol anddefining a storage capability profile for the vvol. The method steps ofFIG. 22, in particular steps 2210, 2212, 2218, and 2220, correspond tosteps 806, 810, 812, and 814 shown in FIG. 8, respectively. In addition,the method steps of FIG. 22 include steps 2214, 2215, and 2216, whichdefine the storage capability profile for the vvol that is beingcreated.

At step 2214, the storage system manager determines whether values to beused in the storage capability profile have been specified in therequest to create the vvol. If they are not, the storage system managerat step 2215 employs the storage capability profile associated with thevvol's storage container as the vvol's storage capability profile withdefault values. If the values to be used in the storage capabilityprofile have been specified, the storage system manager at step 2216employs the storage capability profile associated with the vvol'sstorage container as the vvol's storage capability profile with thespecified values in lieu of the default values.

In one embodiment, the storage capability profile of a vvol is stored invvol database 314 as key-value pairs. Once the storage capabilityprofile of a vvol has been defined and stored in vvol database 314 askey-value pairs and as long as replication and snapshotting relatedattributes and values are part of this profile as shown in the exampleprofiles of FIG. 21, the storage system is able to perform replicationand snapshotting for the vvol with no further instructions issued by thehost computer.

FIG. 23 is a flow diagram that illustrates method steps executed bystorage system manager 131, 132, or 135, for creating snapshots from aparent vvol. In one embodiment, a snapshot tracking data structure isemployed to schedule snapshots according to snapshot definitions instorage capability profiles of a given vvol. Upon reaching a scheduledtime for a snapshot, the storage system manager at step 2310 retrievesthe vvol ID from the snapshot tracking data structure. Then, at step2312, the storage system manager generates a unique vvol ID for thesnapshot. The storage system manager at step 2315 employs the storagecapability profile of the parent vvol (i.e., the vvol having the vvol IDretrieved from the snapshot tracking data structure) as the snapshotvvol's storage capability profile. It should be noted that since this isan automated profile driven snapshotting process driven by the storagesystem, the user does not get an opportunity to specify custom values tobe used in the storage capability profile of the snapshot vvol. At step2318, the storage system manager creates the snapshot vvol within thestorage container of the parent vvol by updating the allocation bitmapin container database 316 and adding a new vvol entry for the snapshotvvol to vvol database 314. Then, at step 2320, the storage systemmanager updates the snapshot tracking data structure by scheduling atime for generating the next snapshot for the parent vvol. It should berecognized that the storage system manager must concurrently maintainsnapshot tracking data structures and execute the method steps of FIG.23 for all vvols whose storage capability profile mandates scheduledsnapshots.

After snapshots are created in the manner described above, key-valuepairs stored in vvol database 314 are updated to indicate that thesnapshot vvols are of type=snapshot. Also, in embodiments where ageneration number is maintained for the snapshots, the generation numberbeing incremented each time a snapshot is taken or set to be equal todate+time, the generation number is stored as a key-value pair. Theparent vvol ID of a snapshot vvol is also stored as a key-value pair insnapshot vvol entries. As a result, a host computer may query vvoldatabase 314 for snapshots corresponding to a particular vvol ID. It isalso possible for the host computer to issue a query to vvol databasefor snapshots corresponding to a particular vvol ID and a particulargeneration number.

The various embodiments described herein may employ variouscomputer-implemented operations involving data stored in computersystems. For example, these operations may require physical manipulationof physical quantities usually, though not necessarily, these quantitiesmay take the form of electrical or magnetic signals where they, orrepresentations of them, are capable of being stored, transferred,combined, compared, or otherwise manipulated. Further, suchmanipulations are often referred to in terms, such as producing,identifying, determining, or comparing. Any operations described hereinthat form part of one or more embodiments may be useful machineoperations. In addition, one or more embodiments also relate to a deviceor an apparatus for performing these operations. The apparatus may bespecially constructed for specific required purposes, or it may be ageneral purpose computer selectively activated or configured by acomputer program stored in the computer. In particular, various generalpurpose machines may be used with computer programs written inaccordance with the teachings herein, or it may be more convenient toconstruct a more specialized apparatus to perform the requiredoperations.

The various embodiments described herein may be practiced with othercomputer system configurations including hand-held devices,microprocessor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumerelectronics, minicomputers, mainframe computers, and the like.

One or more embodiments may be implemented as one or more computerprograms or as one or more computer program modules embodied in one ormore computer readable media. The term computer readable medium refersto any data storage device that can store data which can thereafter beinput to a computer system computer readable media may be based on anyexisting or subsequently developed technology for embodying computerprograms in a manner that enables them to be read by a computer.Examples of a computer readable medium include a hard drive, networkattached storage (NAS), read-only memory, random-access memory (e.g., aflash memory device), a CD (Compact Discs), CD-ROM, a CD-R, or a CD-RW,a DVD (Digital Versatile Disc), a magnetic tape, and other optical andnon-optical data storage devices. The computer readable medium can alsobe distributed over a network coupled computer system so that thecomputer readable code is stored and executed in a distributed fashion.

Although one or more embodiments have been described in some detail forclarity of understanding, it will be apparent that certain changes andmodifications may be made within the scope of the claims. For example,SCSI is employed as the protocol for SAN devices and NFS is used as theprotocol for NAS devices. Any alternative to the SCSI protocol may beused, such as Fibre Channel, and any alternative to the NFS protocol maybe used, such as CIFS (Common Internet File System) protocol.Accordingly, the described embodiments are to be considered asillustrative and not restrictive, and the scope of the claims is not tobe limited to details given herein, but may be modified within the scopeand equivalents of the claims. In the claims, elements and/or steps donot imply any particular order of operation, unless explicitly stated inthe claims.

In addition, while described virtualization methods have generallyassumed that virtual machines present interfaces consistent with aparticular hardware system, the methods described may be used inconjunction with virtualizations that do not correspond directly to anyparticular hardware system. Virtualization systems in accordance withthe various embodiments, implemented as hosted embodiments, non-hostedembodiments, or as embodiments that tend to blur distinctions betweenthe two, are all envisioned. Furthermore, various virtualizationoperations may be wholly or partially implemented in hardware. Forexample, a hardware implementation may employ a look-up table formodification of storage access requests to secure non-disk data.

Many variations, modifications, additions, and improvements arepossible, regardless the degree of virtualization. The virtualizationsoftware can therefore include components of a host, console, or guestoperating system that performs virtualization functions. Pluralinstances may be provided for components, operations or structuresdescribed herein as a single instance. Finally, boundaries betweenvarious components, operations and data stores are somewhat arbitrary,and particular operations are illustrated in the context of specificillustrative configurations. Other allocations of functionality areenvisioned and may fall within the scope of embodiments describedherein. In general, structures and functionality presented as separatecomponents in exemplary configurations may be implemented as a combinedstructure or component. Similarly, structures and functionalitypresented as a single component may be implemented as separatecomponents. These and other variations, modifications, additions, andimprovements may fall within the scope of the appended claims(s).

1. In a computer system that is connected to a storage system viainput-output command (IO) paths and non-IO paths, a method forprovisioning a logical storage volume for an application running in thecomputer system, the method comprising: selecting a logical storagecontainer created in the storage system; issuing a request to thestorage system via a non-IO path to create the logical storage volume inthe selected logical storage container; and storing a unique identifierfor the logical storage volume received from the storage system inresponse to the request and associating the unique identifier with theapplication running in the computer system.
 2. The method of claim 1,wherein the application is a virtual machine and the logical storagevolume stores metadata files of the virtual machine, the metadata filesincluding a disk descriptor file for a virtual disk of the virtualmachine.
 3. The method of claim 2, wherein the logical storage volumestores data files of the virtual disk and has a size defined in the diskdescriptor file for the virtual disk.
 4. The method of claim 3, furthercomprising: issuing a request to the storage system to increase the sizeof the virtual disk; and updating the disk descriptor file for thevirtual disk to indicate the increased size.
 5. The method of claim 1,further comprising: issuing a request to the storage system to clone thelogical storage volume between same or different logical storagecontainers.
 6. The method of claim 5, further comprising: determiningthat the logical storage containers are not compatible; and issuing datamovement commands from the computer system to copy contents of thelogical storage volume to the cloned logical storage volume.
 7. Themethod of claim 1, further comprising: issuing a request to the storagesystem to move the logical storage volume between logical storagecontainers in the storage system.
 8. The method of claim 7, furthercomprising: determining that an IO path from the computer system to thestorage system would be broken as a result of the move; and issuing arequest to establish a new IO path from the computer system to thestorage system after the move is completed.
 9. The method of claim 1,further comprising: determining that the logical storage container hassufficient space to accommodate the logical storage volume.
 10. Themethod of claim 1, further comprising: transmitting authenticationcredentials and a decryption key to the storage system, wherein, uponauthentication of the computer system by the storage system, the requestto create the logical storage volume is issued to the storage system inan encrypted form that can be decrypted using the decryption key. 11.The method of claim 1, wherein the storage system is a SCSIprotocol-based storage system.
 12. The method of claim 1, wherein thestorage system is an NFS protocol-based storage system.
 13. In acomputer system that is connected to a storage system via input-outputcommand (IO) paths and non-IO paths, a method for reprovisioning alogical storage volume for an application running in the computersystem, the method comprising: issuing a request to the storage systemvia a non-IO path to increase a size of the logical storage volumeprovisioned in the selected logical storage container; receivingacknowledgement of the increase in size from the storage system; andupdating a metadata file associated with the logical storage volume toindicate the increased size.
 14. The method of claim 13, furthercomprising: determining that the logical storage container hassufficient space to accommodate the increased size of the logicalstorage volume.
 15. The method of claim 13, wherein the application is avirtual machine and the updated metadata file is a disk descriptor filefor a virtual disk of the virtual machine.
 16. The method of claim 15,wherein the metadata file is stored in another logical storage volumethat has been provisioned for the virtual machine.
 17. A computer systemconnected to a storage system via input-output command (IO) paths andnon-IO paths, the computer system comprising: a management interface ina non-IO path; and a storage interface in an IO path, wherein themanagement interface is configured to: (i) generate a request to createa logical storage volume in the storage system and to receive inresponse to the request a unique identifier for the logical storagevolume, and (ii) generate a request to bind the logical storage volumeto a protocol endpoint configured in the storage system and to receivein response to the request first and second identifiers, and wherein thestorage interface encodes IO issued to the logical storage volume withthe first and second identifiers.
 18. The computer system of claim 17,wherein the storage interface generates IOs in SCSI compliant format.19. The computer system of claim 17, wherein the storage interfacegenerates IOs in NFS compliant format.
 20. The computer system of claim17, wherein the management interface is configured to generate a requestto rebind the logical storage volume and to receive in response to therequest new first and second identifiers, the new first identifieridentifying a new protocol endpoint to which the logical storage volumeis bound and the new second identifier uniquely identifying the logicalstorage volume amongst all logical storage volumes bound to the newprotocol endpoint.